Should Arsenal jump at the £26.8M asking price for Juventus star?

Arsenal have supposedly been offered Juan Cuadrado for a fee of £26.8 Million, while our bids to sign both Thomas Lemar and Riyad Mahrez have both taken blows.

The Gunners have been pursuing a deal to bring Monaco’s Lemar to London, but have so far failed to tempt the French champions to accept one of three supposed offers.

Riyad Mahrez has long been touted as the back-up option to the French playmaker, but Roma are now believed to be leading the chase for his signature, and the Gunners may end up missing out on both of the above.

We are now claimed to have enquired about the availability of former Chelsea winger Juan Cuadrado, and have been quoted a reasonable £26.8 Million, and he may well be the man that Arsene Wenger decides shows the most value, while bringing strength to our first-team squad.

Liverpool have already moved to bring in one former Blue who was not given a fair shot at Premier League football in Mohamed Salah, and we may well be following suit, with the Colombian having only spent six months with the club before being allowed to return to Serie A.

Mario Mandzukic impressed in a wide attacking role last term, pushing Juan down the pecking order at Juve, and the club now appear to be willing to part ways.

We have one more week until the Community Shield and it would be ideal to have as much of our squad together before the start of the campaign, and while we appear to be favouring a slow negotiation process with Monaco for Thomas Lemar, we may well end up with Cuadrado instead.

Did Chelsea let him down by failing to grant him a real chance? Would it be a risk bringing him back to the Premier League?

20 Comments

I have seen Cuadrado playing for Chelsea and Juventus. He is like Nani, too much style and tricks but no real impact.

Rather than getting him, Arsenal should try to get:

– Rafinha : Has been playing with Messi and is used to play with Barcelona’s football level (like Sanchez). Can play in other positions as well and younger.

– Jean Seri : Arsenal needs a central midfielder with great playmaking skill and ability to possess the ball like Xavi, Messi and Iniesta. Arsenal does not have Barcelona’s calibre midfield general in their current squad.

– Patrik Schick : Arsenal already has Lacazette, but it would great if there is a taller and bigger striker in the front. Lacazette can play behind him with Sanchez or Ozil.

Mahrez is a type of player, we have too many of. Good offensive skills, but useless defensively. We need to get better with a stronger midfield defensively, so we should get players that can provide it.

On paper Cuadrado should be an ideal fit for the Premier League but his time at Chelsea supplemented by a fairly eratic Juve career would indicate different.
Monaco are unlikely to release Lemar during this Transfer Window given the decimation to their existing squad.It seems Mahrez would be the best option and has apparently put in eye-catching performances during Leicester ‘s pre-season.Despite a fairly innocuous 2016-17 he does have proven success within in the Premier League.Is he worth over £40m?…Of course not!…But given the level of current fees and the fact that Alexis undoubtedly wants to leave sooner rather than later…I would take the Mahrez option…That said whilst Wenger remains in denial who is to say what will happen!?…

DENIAL…that Alexis and Oxlade-Chamberlain both want to play for teams that are going to make better use of their abilities with the prospect of challenging for major trophies!
DENIAL that the squad remains weighed down by players who are not the right standard and are paid too much meaning that other more suitable Clubs don’t want them
DENIAL that the only reason Ozil is likely to sign a new contract is down to the fact that no other Club would pay him the same salary on top of any form of transfer fee (same as the “deadwood really”..see above)
DENIAL that you can’t continually fit square pegs into round holes and expect success.Elneny is not nor will he ever be a Centre Back and whilst Monreal is no longer good enough to play left back he should only be used as an “emergency” Centre Back (in a back 3) if all other options are unavailable.
Eveything once again points to a shambles for the oncoming Season…Hopefully this won’t lead to infighting amongst the fans and Jens might actually be allowed to motivate the team in his own inimitable way…which might result in similar displays to that laid down in the FA Cup Final.Whatever the ineptitude of Wenger there remains a core of fairly decent players who can “achieve” on their day…We as supporters all can.
but HOPE! !

cant understand your logic.. you are hoping Jens will be allowed to motivate the team to put in displays like FA Cup… i think you will find Arsene was the person who ACTUALLY did motivate them to that success !

If we aim for this years best like mbappe and lemar only to then turn round and settle for last years best shows us up as being ill prepared also that we lack the ambition that clubs of arsenals global standing ought to have. When we see the other premier clubs have already taken fc-monaco players and it raises the question what approach are we taking at these negotiations. I always thought were juventus’ equal in world fooballing terms and they’re marvellous as indeed we have pedigree too. But we dont have to take cuadrado we need to simply pay close as poss for those quality players we desperately need.

I hope the Lemar deal isn’t like the Lacazette one. I’ve never seen a club wait so long to get a certain player. I’d say most of the groundwork over Lacazette was done last season, but we began it well before that season. Lemar, like surely we can get a player rather than Wenger waiting for his preferred choice. We need to get people in who know how to turn players heads, tap up.

Cuadrado is a bit like D Costa, Costa is better though, more polished. B Munich have brought in twelve players. Some big names retiring, Lahm, Alonso. If we’re gonna go for Goretzka we need to do it now, forget that he has a year left and just go for him as if he could finally be a replacement on Vieira or Gilberto. Make an offer that’ll have Schalke doing all the head turning for us. And if we get a CM player then just pay the amount it will take to sort out a wide forward. I still believe we need a tall imposing CB, in the mold of a Huth or V.V.D. Good in the air and will put body on the line, and will cut down any player that had just cut down one of ours. Holding’s on his way to being this player, he has personality traits that the best CB’s need to have.

What’s up with that Stewart Robson dude, seriously, what is it that we done to him. He looks like he’s never gonna drop it. Chelsea two seasons ago, Manu couple seasons ago, Liverpool, he didn’t bite. We win cups against Chelsea Manu Manc, but all he’ll see is vengeance.

agreed… lets give some of our youngsters a chance if we cant buy the top players we are targetting. Nelson could be better than Cuadrado if given a run and Iwobi has shown some talent.. why pay 30 mn or more for ordinary players ?
Part of this is fans lack of patience which has caused panic buys .. probably by Gazidis rather than Wenger …

Wenger is ruining Arsenal installmentaly but many Arsenal supporters are not well informed to give correct assessment of the reason why Arsenal is underachieving . One of the reasons is bad recruitment of players and victimizing good players and frustrating them out of Arsenal because Wenger was not directly involved in identifying them before they were bought by the club .Lucas Perez is the latest victim. Wenger said Perez was bought as backup for Welbeck who was injured, fine, but how many goals did Welbeck who was given more matches score for Arsenal compared to Lucas Perez who played for 950 minutes throughout the season? Wenger called Welbeck to join Arsenal hence the better treatment.
Wenger wants to buy Cauldrado “offered” to him by Juventus for £26.8 million! This is a player shipped out by Chelsea for not making the cut and now Juventus wants to get rid of the winger too. Is he good for Arsenal? No ! A player that’s not good enough for our rivals cannot be good for Arsenal. Lucas Perez that was denied game time by Wenger last season scored 7 goals with 6 assists for a total game time of 950 minutes. He was bought for £17million . Cauldrado that Wenger wants to buy played 45 matches for Juventus last season and scored 3 ( three) goals ! Our own right winger Walcot who played far less number of matches due to injury and Wenger factor scored 19 goals, so where is the wisdom in buying less productive players to those we have and at a higher price? This is what happens in a club where power is concentrated in only one person because others like Gazardis and others on the Board have abdicated their responsibilities.
Lucas can play in both wings as well as the Centre to get goals but Wenger frustrated him out just like he did to Podolski and Joe Campbell because he Wenger was not the one who put a call through to them before they came to Arsenal..
The sad thing in Arsenal is that nobody supervises Wenger.No target of achievement is set for him. He is not accountable to anybody –the Board or supporters hence he does what he likes even to the detriment of the Club.He is about to do another thing to the detriment of the club by pushing out a good player in Lucas Perez and bringing in Cauldrado,the reject of Chelsea and Juventus at a higher cost than the prolific Lucas that he frustrated out .
Arsenal fans should brace up for two more years of mediocre performance under Wenger.

Samuel, your analysis is spot on! Wenger without David Dean has misplaced his faith in the wrong players. He drives good players away, is too slow to recognize the deficiencies in the team, unwilling to react quickly enough and/or pay the going rate in making signings and Arsenal is stuck with others who can’t be sold because they can’t make the same wages.
Arsenal needs additional players with size, heart and “mongrel” if they want to compete with the top clubs in the EPL and Europe. Small technical players just get bullied off the park.

i cry for my team arsenal,they never learn from mistake,delay in transfer market always,what has Perez done to Wenger,why all this treatment, so many dead wood in the team,I just hope this season will not be worst than the last